Bibcode
Paredes, J. M.; Munar-Adrover, P.; Ribó, M.; Casares, J.; Moldón, J.; Iwasawa, K.; Marcote, B.; Migliari, S.; Paredes-Fortuny, X.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Volume 835, Issue 2, article id. L33, 6 pp. (2017).
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2
2017
Citations
29
Refereed citations
24
Description
MWC 656 is the first known Be/black hole (BH) binary system. Be/BH
binaries are important in the context of binary system evolution and
sources of detectable gravitational waves because they are possible
precursors of coalescing neutron star/BH binaries. X-ray observations
conducted in 2013 revealed that MWC 656 is a quiescent high-mass X-ray
binary (HMXB), opening the possibility to explore X-ray/radio
correlations and the accretion/ejection coupling down to low
luminosities for BH HMXBs. Here we report on a deep joint Chandra/VLA
observation of MWC 656 (and contemporaneous optical data) conducted in
2015 July that has allowed us to unambiguously identify the X-ray
counterpart of the source. The X-ray spectrum can be fitted with a power
law with Γ ∼ 2, providing a flux of ≃4 ×
10‑15 erg cm‑2 s‑1 in
the 0.5–8 keV energy range and a luminosity of L X
≃ 3 × 1030 erg s‑1 at a 2.6 kpc
distance. For a 5 M⊙ BH this translates into ≃5
× 10‑9 L Edd. These results imply that
MWC 656 is about 7 times fainter in X-rays than it was two years before
and reaches the faintest X-ray luminosities ever detected in
stellar-mass BHs. The radio data provide a detection with a peak flux
density of 3.5 ± 1.1 μJy beam‑1. The obtained
X-ray/radio luminosities for this quiescent BH HMXB are fully compatible
with those of the X-ray/radio correlations derived from quiescent BH
low-mass X-ray binaries. These results show that the accretion/ejection
coupling in stellar-mass BHs is independent of the nature of the donor
star.
Related projects
Black holes, neutron stars, white dwarfs and their local environment
Accreting black-holes and neutron stars in X-ray binaries provide an ideal laboratory for exploring the physics of compact objects, yielding not only confirmation of the existence of stellar mass black holes via dynamical mass measurements, but also the best opportunity for probing high-gravity environments and the physics of accretion; the most
Montserrat
Armas Padilla